Tag: lifehack

I’ve tried lots of different techniques and tools over the last couple of years and some of them help but some just don’t work for me. Sometimes you can just tell straight away but it’s not always that obvious. Every now and then evaluate your processes and identify areas that may be unnecessary or that aren’t beneficial enough to warrant the time involved.

The most important thing when trying to improve your productivity is ‘Learn What Works For You’.

Overall I thought the book was pretty good, definitely worth a read. I would recommend it to everyone out there especially anyone who has the nagging feeling that there must be more to life than the normal life that seems to be forced upon you.

There is some common ground with The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss as this book also tackles the idea of living the life you want but instead on focusing on how to reduce your time spent working on stuff you may not enjoy the focus is on doing what you really love, working harder than before but on stuff that you really enjoy…

In other words the book helps you create, or at least helps you realise that it is possible to create, your ideal lifestyle based around something you are really passionate about.

At the start of the year I set myself a list of goals to try and achieve in 2011. As we have now passed the half way mark in the year I am going through my list and looking at the progress of each item.

This is a follow on post from Part 1 so you might want to read that one first. This post covers the remaining categories which are Self Improvement, Finances, Photography and Travel.

Overall I am very pleased with my progress so far. It really does help to have some goals to aim for. I wonder how many of these things I would have achieved it I had just pottered along aimlessly as I was doing before…

As I mentioned the other day there is another huge 72 hour sale. This time it’s known as the Rock Your Life sale and there is a collection of 22 different courses and eBooks to help with many different aspects of your life.

Anyway this massive collection would normally cost £1087, if you bought all of the items individually, but for a very limited time you can get the whole bundle for just $97 (about £60). $5 of that also goes to charity which is a nice touch.

For starters the full version of Sell Your Crapby Adam Baker is included which I only just recommended the other week. This in itself normally costs $47, nearly half of the total cost…

Once again there are so many resources there is bound to be a few that should spark some kind of interest. But you are going to have to hurry as the sale closes at 17:00 (UK time) on Thursday 23rd June…

I have recently read The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. The main concept of the book is pretty staggering when you think about it. Working for just 4 hours a week seems impossible so it must be a bit of a get rich quick style sales strategy. At least that was my initial thoughts when I first heard the name of the book branded about…

The basic premise is that you can set up a business and after a certain amount of time you can whittle the amount of your time required to maintain the business down to about 4 hours per week. Explained this way it already seems a bit more obtainable.

Anyway I thought I might as well give a quick review of the book that has inspired the use of the term Lifestyle Design all over the internet.

I have recently come across the idea of Travel Hacking. This is basically a way to get the most out of the free upgrades and free flights around the world available from the different airlines by collecting Frequent Flyer Miles.

I used to collect AirMiles many years ago as my credit card used to ward them to me just for using the card. I think I got a free flight or two to Europe over the years but nothing to write home about.

Then the credit card company stopped giving away the free miles and my AirMiles account just lapsed…

Recently I came across the Travel Hacking Cartel. This is a paid for membership site which provides information on how best to collect and use your miles with regular new deals being posted with some great opportunities.

One of the benefits of being your own boss is the extra freedom that you are rewarded with. If a friend calls me up, out of the blue, and asks what I am doing tomorrow the chances are I can rearrange my day to meet up if only for a short while.

When working the normal 9–5 I was even concerned about asking for time off to go to the doctors. I would never have dared to ask for a couple of hours off to visit a friend, who maybe only comes back this way once a year and is only in town for one afternoon, even if I could have easily made that time back up…

To make things even worse evenings used to feel so precious, as a time to unwind from a hard days work, that even if the friend offered to meet up that evening instead I would sometimes have to refuse. This feels like such a shame and I felt that slowly over the years I have lost contact with a few of my friends due to the lack of free time I had.

Recently I have begun to wonder if jacking in the 9–5 is the right thing to do. It’s not as if I have loads of money in the bank and I don’t need to work any more.

Money is not the be all and end all. In fact it is quite likely that money will be extremely tight for a while, until I create something that will start bringing in some regular income—that’s the hope at least.

‘Why am I giving up my job?’

This question came to mind while trying to justify my decision to myself and when I sat down and thought about it there were more reasons than I realised.

This still doesn’t mean that it is the right thing to do but I have made my decision and I plan to stick with it. We will just have to see where it leads me.

This shows my progress against the goals I set myself in May. And gives me a chance to set some new goals to aim for in July.

So how did I do this month? Pretty well I think.

I managed to get the copyright post out the door, well at least the first part of it, and that was starting to take up a little too much of my time.

The only task I was a bit disappointed with was the one to do with my activity levels. I don’t feel like that is too much of a problem anyway as I will have much more opportunity to tackle this in the coming months.